Authors: Jim Shepard
She felt a rush of shame, his loyalty juxtaposed to her weakness, her ongoing lying.
She was still standing there with the phone.
“Try nine-one-one,” he said.
She hung up.
“I'll call them tomorrow,” she said, but his face when she said that made her turn back to the phone, and, exasperated, as if he'd been relentlessly asking they stop for ice cream, she dialed 911. What she'd do now she didn't know. Try the hang-up thing again?
When the busy signal came on, she angrily held the receiver out for Todd to hear.
When she hung up again, he started to cry. She crossed the kitchen and knelt beside him and hugged him. She was crying, too. The dog walked around them in circles.
She checked him again to make sure he was okay. She took him upstairs. He got undressed and into bed. She went into the bathroom and leaned on the sink, her arms spread apart and holding her weight. She used the Pond's to take off what little eye makeup she had on and washed her face.
It was hot but breezy. Her bedroom windows were open. She maneuvered around her room in the dark and got on the bed, still in her clothes, and lay on her back. Downstairs, the dog was making the rounds, her license tag clinking on the metal water dish. Todd was crying quietly in his room.
She slapped at herself, spread her fingers over her face and pulled at it. She had to talk to people, her father maybe. She thought of Bruno, what he would say.
What frightened her most was her inability to picture the terrible things ahead. It seemed like the best evidence of how inadequate she was.
She imagined a generalized scandal, everyone's understanding of her changed. Maybe Todd taken away from her.
You
killed
somebody, she thought. Someone's dead because of you, and this is what you think about, this is what you're worried about.
He could've had a family, she thought.
What was he doing in the
road?
What was he doing there in the road?
At some point she heard Todd get up, the bed springs, the floorboards. He was going downstairs.
She got up, too, still dressed. It was late. She was chilly and walked with her arms folded.
She found him in the kitchen. He was eating M&M's in the dark. He'd put them in a little bowl. The bowl caused her a pang: he always got neat when he was scared.
She was going to pull a chair over next to his but suddenly was too tired even for that. She sat on the floor beside him, her head on his thigh. He didn't say anything.
She half dozed. She had the impression he was alert, awake, the whole time. The kitchen floor, the walls, were getting lighter. Through the doorway to the living room, she could make out shapes of chairs and a small table. Did she own these things? She remembered Todd that morning at breakfast, smiling speechlessly. She remembered nodding to herself as she drove, as if consenting to her life.
“We're not going to tell anyone, are we, Mom?” he said above her. His voice was so pitiful and despairing that it hurt too much to answer him. The M&M's rolled and clicked together in the bowl like abacus beads. He put his hand on her head, tentatively. He came down to the floor with her and brought the bowl.
Outside, some garbage cans clanked. On the floor, his legs stuck straight out and his shoes were run over at the heels.
He finally fell asleep. His mouth was open against her shoulder. She listened to morning birds with cries like the workings of scissors. She sat there with her son and waited for the next thing.
B
RUNO
I was going to give Joanie a ride to her mother's for her kid's confirmation party, I couldn't, I had to show this Korean every single fucking thing about a Dodge Dart we had on the lot, a trade-in from 1901. He wants to see all the paperwork, he wants to climb underneath it, he wants to go through the buyer's manual like he's prepping for a space shot. The manual's so old it's coming apart in our hands. It's six-forty-five and he's not buying today, we can see that, but he's not going anywhere, either.
This is a Buick dealership. I'm wearing a Buick pin. We're surrounded by Buicks. Showroom floor is wall to wall with them. The guy goes, Do you sell Buicks here? I go, No, we give 'em away. That's how we stay in business: giving away free Buicks.
This guy couldn't decide on a shitbox Dodge Dart, there's no chance in the
world
he's going to spring for a full-ticket Buick.
He goes, Are they dependable cars?
I go, Look, Boulder Dam shut down a few times last year. You want me to guarantee a lousy six-thousand-dollar car?
He's taking all this in, giving it some hard thought. The minute hand's going around. He wants to know, Do they come with automatic transmission and air at no extra charge? I tell him, You bet they do. Not only that, but we throw in a free dinner and tickets to a Broadway show. What's he think we're running here, a raffle?
We're standing around talking afterwards in the office, and Cifulo's giving me this look, and I'm watching the clock while this guy sips his coffee and stares into space. The missus is sitting there with him and clearly has veto power but doesn't say boo. I'm making conversation, so I ask him if he's Japanese. Big mistake: turns out he's Korean. The missus is miffed.
Afterward Cifulo gives me grief about it, so I tell him, What, that's better? Far as I'm concerned, they're boat people with an attitude. They got here earlier, they're better? I say no. They run dink grocery stores, three dollars for a banana. There's one guy on Barnum Avenue, I still don't know his name,
SHIMSI
, the sign says. What is that? Two names? His name?
BUY OUR FOOD
? One thing's for sure: you want to get some service, don't ask Kato behind the counter.
Cifulo tells me afterward I was rude to them. This imbecile moving two units a month, if he's lucky and his family comes in, is telling
me
how to run my business. I told him, What are you talking to me for? You watch Steven Seagal movies.
Out for Violence, Revenge Is Mine
âwhatever they're called. I told him, Steven Sea
gal?
The man wears a ponytail? Is this the
Revolution?
And Sea-
gal:
what is that? The guy's not a Jew anymore? And what are you, what are you, Bishop Sheehan? Mother Teresa?
So it turns out I couldn't give Joanie this ride.
They talk about ups and downs in the car business, but we been down a while. I'm always high man for monthly sales, but what is that? Every day we stand around the showroom like CYO kids waiting for the party to begin.
Now on toppa that I gotta worry about this Monteleone thing.
Things are gonna go wrong. It's not like things are always gonna go right. The key is how we deal with it. How do we act? I say, I can't control everything. But I have to deal with it.
Joanie, for example. I coulda pushed it the other night, after that kiss. I wanted to push it. But it's not right.
You got to have a little class, a little understanding of the way to do things. In Italy, the old gentlemen, they cultivate
tratto,
you know, a
elegance,
a way you handle yourself, conduct your affairs.
She's coming around. She doesn't know it, her mother doesn't know it, nobody probably knows it. But she's coming around.
There will be setbacks. I understand that. Remember: if it isn't one thing, it will surely be another. What's important? Your attitude.
N
INA
The church was very big for my mother. She came over when she must've been thirty-one, thirty-two, four kids in tow and one on the way. I think the Church was a big help. It was a place she could trust, she had the priest she could talk to. Plus it was a big connection to Strangolagalli, to what she knew. Right before we came over, one of my little brothers died; he was just a baby. Our priest there, Father Picarazzi, was a big help. She was still sad when she got here, so naturally she went to the priest here, too.
She prayed a lot at home, usually early early in the morning, before we all were up. She had all the little statues in her bedroom. And the pictures with the palms still behind them from whenever the last Palm Sunday was.
Our church was St. Anthony's on North Avenue. Not St. Anthony of Padua, who helped people find lost thingsâthe other St. Anthony. The one in the desert who was always resisting the temptations of the devil. The devil showed up at his hut in the form of a pig. Just what the temptation was involving the pig, we didn't know. Maybe the devil was tempting him with bacon. But how big a temptation was that? It seemed like a lot of work. He had to kill the pig, etc. Anyway, the pig was in the stained-glass windows above the confessionals on the right side of the church. I prayed on that side. I was a little girl, twelve years old, just about Todd's age. It sounds terrible now, but I used to pray sometimes to the pig. He was small and they did him cute. I guess I didn't believe it was really the devil. I think I figured everybody pictured in church had to be good.
The confessionals on the other side didn't get any light. They were much darker. They were used by visiting priests. You'd go in there, it'd be like a cave. You couldn't see the priest and you didn't know him anyway. So you went there if you had serious sins to confess or you hadn't been to confession in a long time. It was good for gossip: we'd watch who went over there. Oh, Mr. Motz: what's
he
doing over there? So it kind of backfired on you.
It was a very Italian church. Father Favale was the priest for thirty, thirty-five years. He joked every Pentecost Sunday that our sins were committed in Italian, confessed in English, and pardoned in Latin.
There was one sister always used to joke with me that because of me she prayed to St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. She thought I was a hopeless case because I wasn't religious enough.
She'd make notes when I was bad, like in the middle of the winter, and she wouldn't punish me then. When it was spring and beautiful out, then she'd keep me after school. I could hear all the kids running around and having a great time, and she'd say, Nina, remember when you did this? And when you did that?
But I was good kid for the most part.
My mother was worried about my lying. I lied, you know, like kids do. I wasn't a big liar. My mother believed as long as you never told a lie you were always on God's side. The most important thing was to tell the truth. You did something wrong, okay. But it was worse to lie about it. And if you lied, that was bad enough. It was worse to pretend that you hadn't lied, and to keep going: every second you lived the lie was another sin.
They'd hit us when we got caught. But not so often; it wasn't like other schools. It was funny: when you were getting hit, you thought the world was like that. Then afterwards when you met other people who weren't Catholic or didn't get hit in school, you thought: it
isn't
like that. And then, sometime after that, you realized the world
was
like that, after all. So then you thought maybe you were better off knowing early.
T
ODD
The worst thing up to now I ever did was commit a sacrilege. The way we were taught, a sacrilege was this huge thing, and really rare. It didn't seem so rare to us. The sisters made it a big thing and then they didn't. You couldn't tell. For instance, in fifth grade these two guys got into a fight. Sister Amalia tried to break it up and got punched in the chest. She was upset. She sat there on the floor holding herself and said it was a sacrilege. The kid who did it was scared. But we didn't believe her. We didn't think she was that holy. Also, it was an accident, and we didn't think you could get a sacrilege that way. We made the kid feel better. Later he was coming back from Communion at Easter and he held up his arm for us, right there in church. The sisters didn't know what he meant, but we did: he was going, Here's my arm; it hasn't fallen off yet.
But there was another kind that wasn't accidental. One year our parish priest went away and the guy who replaced him was mean. In confession he'd go, “C'mon, c'mon,” if you stopped to think. And if you said something he didn't like, he'd say, “You did
what?
” You heard it all the time. It was embarrassing. Kids would come out of the booth bright red, or crying.
You couldn't predict what would set him off. Once, I told him I stole some books from the local bookstoreânothing big, two little things on dinosaurs I put under my sweaterâand it must've been the nineteenth case of that, that day, or he must've just been sick of it or something. He blew up. He said, “
What
did you do that for? What were you
think
ing?” And then he said, “You could afford to buy something like that. Your parents could afford it.” So everybody out in church knew I must've stolen something. And I said without thinking, “Don't shout it,” and then he got seriously mad. He kept me in there longer than he was supposed to, just yelling at me. He kept his voice down for that. Then he gave me fifty Hail Marys and fifty Our Fathers. Fifty is a huge amount. I had to go to the altar rail and kneel there, and no matter how fast I said themâand after the first ten I was flyingâit still looked to everyone in the church like I must've killed my mother.
The worst part was I was so scared of confession after that that I didn't go. I kept not wanting to go to Communion. I had all these mortal sins on my soul. The sisters were like, Why aren't you going to Communion? What could I tell them? So finally I went. The whole way up in the line I was telling myself,
Go back, go back, you're going to commit sacrilege.
Because it's sacrilege to receive with a mortal sin on your soul and you know it.
I stood there in line feeling like such a hypocrite, such a liar, the sisters thinking I was being a good Catholic while I was doing this.
After I received, I went back to my row and put my head on the pew in front of me. I looked up and there was Sister Amalia, and she gave me this smile, like she was happy I was so good. I thought,
You committed a sacrilege just so you wouldn't be embarrassed.